


Such a Filthy, Dimming Shine

by Machinery_of_Night



Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Amos Burton Needs a Hug, Amos backstory, Dubious Consent, M/M, One Shot, Pre-Canon, Rape/Non-con Elements, The Churn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:28:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28952700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Machinery_of_Night/pseuds/Machinery_of_Night
Summary: Timmy could only think of a couple reasons Liev would even be here. Either Liev had been in the neighborhood on some other business and figured he may as well come looking for a trip down memory lane and wet hole, or he was strategically demonstrating his dominance by showing up without warning for some reason. His original intent didn’t matter much, he seemed perfectly happy to have found Timmy here.This is a story about Amos Burton back when he was Timmy. What would make a person shut down the way Amos has? Does Amos really not have any feelings left?This takes place directly before the events in the novella, The Churn. If you are up to date on season 5 of the show, I don't think there are any spoilers to be had here.
Relationships: Amos Burton/Other(s)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	Such a Filthy, Dimming Shine

**Author's Note:**

> CW: There is rape in this story and mentions of child sexual abuse and child sex trafficking. Timmy (Amos as we know him later) is 15 or 16 during this story.  
> I also use outdated words regarding sex work, such as "whore." I'm taking this language directly from the novella, The Churn and in no way intend to invalidate or dehumanize sex workers.

Timmy had looked in the fridge ten times already that morning but a mixture of boredom and hunger had compelled him to check again. It was still empty. Since the last time he checked, he had taken apart two trashed hand terminals to see if he could fix them, done several rounds of push-ups, and paced through the small room a dozen times. He internally debated if he’d have any luck hitting the street and scrounging up some work this early in the day. Leaning forward and squinting at the mostly empty shelves didn’t help the situation look any better. He was grimacing sullenly at the lone bottle of ketchup and hoping Lydia would pick something up on her way back, when he heard the door chime and someone come in. The apartment was so small he could look above the squat fridge’s open door in the kitchen and see Liev standing just inside the front doorway. For an instant, Timmy had been shocked to see a rotund figure that definitely wasn’t Lydia. Liev took in his surroundings with a bemused look on his face. It shouldn’t have been the least bit surprising really; technically speaking, this was Liev’s apartment and he had every right to enter unannounced.

Timmy cursed himself inwardly for not hearing the footsteps in the hall, for not hearing the door code being entered. There was a time when he could have picked out Liev’s footsteps heading down the stairs to his room out of all the other people coming and going. Being out of that basement room had made him inattentive. Liev let the door close behind him.

It had been a few months, or more maybe, since Timmy and Liev had laid eyes on each other. As the scope of his enterprises grew bigger, Timmy had seen less and less of Liev. Unless of course there was trouble. Timmy didn’t feel frightened exactly, but every part of him tensed. Liev was not always unkind (especially where Lydia was concerned), but he was large, and he set off almost every internal alarm Timmy had. Years of practice had taught Timmy to err towards stillness in situations like this. He wasn’t super familiar with animals. Aside from the seagulls, there weren’t many to see in inner city Baltimore, but there was a scrapyard he liked to pick through that had mean junkyard dogs guarding it. He had learned from experience that when a predator had you in his sights, sometimes running was the stupidest option. That sometimes dogs -- and men -- had their prey drive triggered by their quarry sprinting off. Then you were sure to be caught and held down and torn up like a rag doll. Sometimes, the only safe course of action was to make eye contact, stay perfectly still, and back away slowly if and when you could. 

“Lydia here?” Liev asked casually, even though the tiny apartment made the answer fairly obvious. 

“Nah, just missed her,” Timmy said as he slowly straightened up, hand still on the fridge door.

“Where’d she go?” Liev’s accent was one of an expatriate. Hard to place after years of living away from his mother tongue, but distinctly not from here even though it was pretending to be.

Timmy had learned many commandments living in a whorehouse, the first and most holy of which was _ It is Not a Sin to Lie to Girl’s Pimp _ . It didn’t matter that Lydia hadn’t been his whore for almost a decade, old habits died hard. It could be about anything really: where she is, who she’s with, if she’s working, if she’s hiding money. When the pimp came around suddenly no one seemed to know anything. Timmy decided it was best to just play dumb.

“I don’t know. Hopefully to get some damn food,” he nodded towards the still open fridge. Liev casually strode from the front door to what might be considered the kitchen, came up behind Timmy and peered into the empty box. The fridge was not a new model by any stretch, but it had only broken down on Lydia once. Timmy had managed to scavenge the part she needed to fix it before she had to throw out her freezerful of food, including a small ice cream bar Lydia was saving for his birthday. Timmy stayed motionless and continued to look forward, as if he didn’t notice the man’s presence entering his personal space. In his experience, panic was useless. It would never keep you safe. Being aware was what kept you safe.

“That’s a fucking sad sight to behold. Lydia isn’t sniffing all the money I give her up her nose is she?” as he said this he placed a hand around Timmy’s arm and gave a tight but not unfriendly squeeze, “Nah, I bet you are just a growing boy.” Deliberately and without shrugging off Liev’s hand, Timmy closed the fridge door and turned around and smiled at the unwelcome guest. “Goddamn, look at you, must have grown a foot since I last saw you. No wonder you are eating her out of house and home.” 

“Yeah, Lydia says if I keep shooting up the way I am, I’ll be tall as a belter soon,” he’d been hearing this a lot lately.

“But twice as wide, Jesus!” Liev, whose own wide frame belied his long fingers, easily reached all the way around Timmy’s bicep, kneaded his skin, felt the firmness of his newfound muscles. He had hoped that the emptiness of the fridge would add credence to his lie about Lydia’s whereabouts, but now he was regretting letting Liev get so close to him right away as the tightness of the knot grew in his stomach.

The truth was Lydia had another name, another life really, but it was the name part that had piqued his interest as a kid. It was like a superhero’s secret identity. Her other name was so secret, in fact, that not even Timmy or his mother had ever known it. But whoever this secret identity was, she was still collecting Basic. Every so often she would leave Timmy to his own devices for a few hours and come back with a little money. She was less cagey about it since she had moved out of the brothel and wasn't always under the eyes of Burton’s men. But Timmy knew enough not to ask her too many questions about it, and he certainly knew enough not to let Liev in on it. 

As a child, Timmy thought it was silly that Lydia would choose to live at the brothel rather than wherever she had come from. He thought that if he had a secret name, he would leave forever. He sometimes imagined what her other life was like, if she had children of her own or a mother who loved her. He still often thought about what would make a person  _ want _ to live the life Lydia did. 

Timmy was holding out hope that Liev would leave after discovering that Lydia wasn’t home, but those hopes were dashed when the man casually took off his jacket and draped it over the back of the only open chair at the cluttered table. The remnants of the trashed hand terminals, some shotgun parts from an earlier project and several protein bar wrappers currently made the table unusable. Generally, when they were still lovers, Lydia had visited Liev at his place. It was nicer after all, and didn’t have a messy kid sometimes squatting there. But Liev was acting as if this were his second home, like he was completely at ease here. 

Timmy could only think of a couple reasons Liev would even be here. Either Liev had been in the neighborhood on some other business and figured he may as well come looking for a trip down memory lane and wet hole, or he was strategically demonstrating his dominance by showing up without warning for some reason. His original intent didn’t matter much, he seemed perfectly happy to have found Timmy here.

Liev pulled the chair away from the table, the cheap plastic chair made an unpleasant noise against the cheap linoleum floor. He turned it towards Timmy in the kitchen and sat. Timmy kept his body language neutral from his spot by the fridge as he worried about the growing possibility that Lydia would return without groceries and give the game away. He was annoyed at this intrusion into his private space, but he was growing more sure by the second that this was the desired effect. Liev was proving that he could come in and touch anything he wanted. Any discomfort on Timmy’s part was more of a feature than a bug. There was no point arguing.

“I see you’ve been keeping busy,” Liev leaned back in his chair and gestured towards the debris on the table.

“Uh, some of the boys got a racket or something going for old electronics. I kind of like seeing what makes things tick and anything I fix up good enough to sell, I get a cut from.” 

“The gals at the brothel said I’d find you here. Said you hadn’t been around for weeks. You still get down to the block?”

“Sometimes, I guess,” Timmy shrugged. He felt like he was being interrogated and he wasn’t sure why. The brothel was the only home he’d ever known before Liev had moved Lydia here. All his friends still roamed the streets there. Of course he’d been back. It seemed like a trick question. Had he come to make Timmy go back to work? 

It was just now dawning on Timmy that he had considered Lydia’s apartment a safe space, a home. It was uncomfortable to have Liev here closing the distance between where he worked and where he felt safe. He told himself to suck it up. He still had to do whatever he needed to do to keep himself and Lydia safe. So there was no point in complaining. 

Tired of the small talk, he took a quiet, deep breath and stepped towards Liev, ending up on the same side but the opposite end of the small table.

“There something you want with me?” he asked directly because he always hated the build up more than the actual event. What was the use of waiting?

“Do you remember a kid named Erich? Got a real fucked up arm?” 

Timmy nodded, Erich was another unregistered kid from the neighborhood; he hadn’t lived at the brothel but Timmy had seen him around enough anyway. He’d gotten drunk with him, gotten into trouble with him, hell, he’d even gotten in a few scrapes standing up for that little guy.

“Well, he recommended you to Burton for a job.” Timmy’s mind raced. A job? When a pimp used that kind of vague language, usually he meant something unpleasant. It took him a moment to realize Liev didn’t mean sex work. 

“Oestra is a guy real close to Burton right now. He needs some extra muscle. And Jesus Christ, was Erich right about you having some,” Liev grinned broadly as he said this. Timmy was at once relieved and uneasy about the prospect of working for Burton as something other than a whore. It wasn’t that he was afraid of fighting if he needed to. It was that he had known plenty of Burton’s “muscle” and had liked precious few of them. They treated the girls like shit in a way that reflected their own profound unhappiness. But in the instant that he had thought Liev was forcing him to go back to sex work he had nearly panicked. Almost anything had to be better than that. He had nothing against selling sex for money, but the way the women were treated in that brothel was abhorrent. He was on the cusp of manhood and part of the reason he’d been allowed to leave was that his changing looks had turned off his customer base. He hated the idea of trying his hand at a more adult male oriented brothel, and the prospect of being labeled useless to Burton was dangerous. This opportunity might let him prove himself to Burton and to the neighborhood at large. 

“This could be real good for both of us. If you can help out Oestra you’ll be close to Burton. Do you think you can do that for me?” Liev said this as if it were a question and not the demand that it was, and then he added, “Can you be good for me?” Timmy could feel the atmosphere in the room change. With the business out of the way, Liev didn’t wait for Timmy’s answer, he growled, “Come here, boy.”

That’s when he knew exactly what Liev wanted from him today. Pimps are a strange bunch. They only have one commodity readily available to them and its sex. And so sex becomes everything to them: its payment, its reward, its punishment, its stress relief. When you have a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. When you’re a pimp, every problem looks like it needs to be fucked. Timmy’s had sex with Liev before, of course. He was a whore working in his stable, it would have been stranger if they had never had sex. Timmy didn't even think that Liev was particularly into boys, or children for that matter. But he understood that, to Liev, he had sometimes been the nail that needed a hammer to come and fix it. 

Now sex was being used as a way to prove his allegiance. Even if he moved up, became an enforcer, became something that wasn’t a whore, he needed to be reminded that, just like this apartment and everything in it, he still really belonged to Liev. Timmy had somehow convinced himself that he wouldn’t have to fuck Liev again once he left the brothel. But he probably just told himself that because it had never been altogether pleasant when it happened. 

Timmy hesitated longer than he would have six months ago, but eventually he walked to the spot directly between Liev’s spread legs, as ordered. As tall as Timmy had become, it didn’t take much craning of his neck for Liev to be looking him right in the eye. Timmy didn’t look away. Liev was just another mean junkyard dog and Timmy knew better than to look away. 

Liev suddenly reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. Timmy didn’t flinch, even though he thought for a second that he was a dead man. He thought Liev had come to kill him after all and that Lydia would have to stumble upon his corpse in her dining room. Instead, Liev produced a silver flask and took a long swig before holding it out to Timmy. Without hesitation Timmy accepted it, hoping it might have something expensive in it. Instead his tongue met the same harsh, black-market vodka that they peddled on the street corner. Burton must have Liev running one of his distilleries. It wasn’t good, but it was readily available. It tasted like shit and made the hairs on the back of Timmy’s neck stand up. But he would have kept drinking it until it was completely gone, if Liev hadn’t snatched it back. Timmy wiped the excess off his lips with his sleeve. He felt warmer, less tense after several mouthfuls. Things were always a little easier to accept with a gutful of alcohol. 

Liev replaced the lid on his flask and stowed it back near his heart. It wasn’t evident based on his practiced stillness, but many thoughts raced through Timmy’s head in that moment. For some reason, many of them were about Erich. He was trying and failing to recall the last time he had seen him. When had Erich gotten in with Burton? That was news to Timmy. 

There had been a golden hour on their street in the late afternoon when the registered kids were out of school, and the kids, like Timmy, who worked at night hadn’t yet started their shifts. That’s when all the neighborhood kids were out and causing trouble. That’s also when Timmy and Erich had first become friends. They were two unregistered kids who would rather be on the street doing just about anything than inside their respective houses. Timmy took an immediate liking to Erich because he didn’t treat him differently. Sometimes Timmy could tell that the registered kids  _ knew  _ what he did at night. Sometimes they wanted to ask him questions about it. But Timmy never asked Erich about his arm, and Erich never asked Timmy about his job.

Erich was smart, that much was clear even to a very young Timmy. But for as smart as he was, he sometimes made dumb decisions. His arm and leg made him seem weak, and seeming weak made him a target. Timmy was no stranger to violence and was not afraid to use it to defend those he thought he should. Eventually though, Erich stopped coming around as much. He started getting really good at stuff on his deck that frankly bored Timmy at the time. He would rather have made a few bucks watching out for the block’s drug dealers then spend time inside forging bus passes to sell around the building.

Timmy suddenly remembered the last time he’d seen Erich. It had been about a year ago. Erich was on the corner outside their building selling some forged nonsense or other. Timmy couldn’t recall quite what it was now. Tickets of some sort. The corner regulars, Burton’s men, did not take kindly to someone standing on their territory and making money. It didn’t matter to them that it wasn’t drugs he was selling. Timmy happened upon them mid-beating and immediately punched the dealer closest to him before pulling the other one away from Erich’s huddled form. That had been enough to get them to stop kicking Erich, but it had also gotten them to turn their attention on Timmy. The details of this particular fight are fuzzy to Timmy, unimportant. He’d gotten his ass kicked and Erich had been smart enough to run while the thugs were busy. That’s what had been important. It hadn’t been the worst beating he ever took, but it was what came afterward that Timmy couldn’t forget. 

As soon as he got down his stairs that night, lip still swollen, ribs still sore, and saw the look on Lydia’s face, he knew he was in trouble. She didn’t technically live there anymore, though her presence wasn’t uncommon or unwelcome. She didn’t say anything, but nodded her head towards the other visitor he had. It was Liev. 

“See? I told you he’d be back. They always show up once they get hungry enough,” Liev said this to Lydia as if Timmy were her lost cat. 

“Timothy. I hear you’ve been fighting again,” one thing Timmy had learned by this point in his life was that words were very rarely needed or wanted from him. So he said nothing.

“In fact,” he continued, “I hear that you’ve been fighting with  _ my _ men?” The inflection let Timmy know that this  _ was _ a question, and he was expected to answer. Still, anything he could think of to say seemed useless. So he shoved his hands in his pockets and said nothing. 

“He hasn’t gone mute has he?” this time Liev was addressing Lydia again. 

“He’s just careful with his words is all.”

“But not with his fists,” Liev was getting noticeably more irritated despite the fact that he was trying to hide it. “Listen, little boy. I think I deserve an explanation.” Lydia gave Timmy another look, more desperate. Timmy knew he was in real trouble here. Liev hadn’t even been around much since he’d been given more territory. If he was here, he was already very unhappy. The smart thing to do would be to deescalate. Something that Timmy was normally good at, something that had often kept him alive. Apologize, give a smile, maybe touch his hand suggestively and promise to be better next time. 

Instead, Timmy gave a little shrug and said, “Maybe the problem is your men. Maybe you should hire guys that don’t let themselves get jumped by little boys.” Lydia dropped her head into her hands. He wasn’t sure why he had said it. Maybe he honestly thought he was giving some good HR advice, maybe he was tired of large men doing whatever it was they wanted. 

Liev was quiet for a moment, clearly that was not the response he had expected. He turned to Lydia almost apologetically, “Look, I get it, he’s all full of hormones. I was a handful at that age. But you know I can’t let this slip. The churn is coming again, and everything happening on my block will be under a microscope,” he turned back to Timmy and growled, “Come here, boy.”

Timmy knew that this situation was growing lethally dangerous. His flight or fight response was gearing up. Usually, he was able to calm himself down and do what needed to be done. Usually, he had little choice. That day he just couldn’t manage. Maybe it  _ was _ the hormones. Maybe he was still angry about seeing his friend desperately trying to protect his face with his crippled hand. For whatever reason, Timmy turned to leave. In an instant, it all happened. Liev was surprisingly spry for a man getting on in years. He was on Timmy immediately. There was a short scuffle. It had been a mistake to turn his back. From behind, Liev had managed to grab a handful of Timmy’s shirt and then wrap an arm around Timmy’s neck and his left arm. Timmy’s captured limb reached up uselessly in the air. Instinctually, Timmy’s free hand went to pull Liev’s arm away from his neck to help facilitate breathing and blood flow. He wasn’t actively being strangled, but his struggling brought him little luck. With all his might he stomped and kicked backwards at Liev’s legs and feet. For Timmy, fighting had always been instinctual. Do whatever you need to do to get this person to stop and never start again. Be brutal, be fast, you may not have another try. He had yet to develop much in the way of strategy. But he was also smaller then, and Liev was a tree of a man. 

“Maybe he just needs to learn to jack off. That kept me out of a lot of trouble as a kid,” as Liev said this, he freed a hand that made its way between Timmy’s legs and grabbed his cock. Shame is not a feeling Timmy was familiar with, especially in regards to sex. Its hard to make a sex trafficked child blush just by touching him. But there was something about feeling so impotent, about this happening in front of Lydia, and about how he felt like he’d been doing the right thing by Erich that made it all too much. Now he kicked his legs wildly, disregarding his own ability to breath or stand on his own. He dug his nails as deep as they would go into his captor’s arm. In response, Liev tightened his hold. 

“Please, both of you stop!” shouted Lydia. But then a pop filled the air, and everything seemed to go white. Timmy didn’t know it at the time, but his shoulder had dislocated, and he had crumpled out of Liev’s arms to the floor. Pain was just a fact to Timmy. He had experienced plenty of it. He avoided it when he could, and accepted it when he couldn’t. This pain felt different; coupled with his shame it was debilitating. He tried to breath through it.

Liev wasn’t finished with him though. He grabbed Timmy off the floor by his good arm and dragged him towards the bed. He was done fighting. Everything he could do now would be to mitigate the damage he’d suffer. It was in that instant, through the pain, he saw Lydia’s face turn away as she headed for the door. There was nothing more she could do for him, and she didn’t want to see any more. He was the nail and Liev was here to fix him.

Timmy realized he had shuddered and wasn’t sure if it was at his memory, or because the actual Liev in front of him had finally begun to touch him. Gently, but firmly, Liev’s hands began testing Timmy's resolve to stay motionless. Liev’s flat palms ran over his chest and down to his stomach, pushing in and up slightly, probing the musculature. Timmy’s ill-fitting shirt pulled up slightly and exposed the skin just above his pants. If he didn’t know better, Timmy would have thought he was getting patted down for weapons. His abs were tense and hard, and he felt some pride in that. He’d been working out near obsessively, he didn’t want to be weak ever again. He wanted to be able to protect those he cared about. He did his best not to react when Liev brushed against his nipples. 

This was an old dance to him. Sometimes, when turning tricks, he’d be able to escape into his head. He’d heard some of the girls discussing that they almost always went somewhere else mentally while working. It didn’t really work for Timmy though, he preferred to be very aware of everything that was happening. Being aware kept you safe, kept you alive. The changing temperament of your john was important to gauge. A man who seemed perfectly content to be touching you softly one minute may start hitting you the next. Timmy knew Liev to be such a man, so he tried to focus, tried to stay present.

The hands wandered upwards again, fingertips landing on Timmy’s broad shoulders. They began to press downward, gently at first, but then they grew insistent. This was it, Timmy had to decide how much he wanted to push back. He had been told he was expected to be muscle on a job, didn’t that mean proving his strength? Purposefully, Timmy did not give in to the pressure just yet. He stayed as still as he could and looked into Liev’s dark eyes. Without speaking, he was saying, “The reason I’m giving in isn’t because I  _ can’t _ fight you, it's because I  _ won’t _ fight you.” They locked eyes until Timmy was satisfied that his message was received, and then he slowly sank to his knees. 

It was odd the little things Timmy started to notice over the years. He had taken to really examining people’s clothing. It could tell you a lot about a person. For instance, Liev must have been doing exceptionally well for himself as a lieutenant. As Timmy went to undo the fly of Liev’s pants, he was impressed by what felt like a real metal button. He could feel how impossibly high the thread count must have been between his fingers. Timmy had also taken note of just how many pockets Liev’s clothing had. It alerted Timmy to the fact that he probably had multiple weapons on him. His jacket alone was most likely weighed down by guns and other contraband. In the back of Timmy’s mind, as he reached into Liev’s underwear to bring his cock out, were the locations of all the guns in the apartment. The hierarchical station he and Lydia occupied meant that really hurting or killing Liev was only a last resort, but it didn’t hurt to be situationally aware. 

Timmy went to work. The tension of the situation had given him a jumpstart on the job of getting Liev hard. Timmy knew well that the feeling of having power over someone was an aphrodisiac. That even after all the people that had been on their knees in front of him, Liev still thrilled at the surrender. Perhaps this was all he wanted. Perhaps seeing Timmy on his knees with his cock in his mouth would be enough to satisfy whatever Liev was after. He put his hand on the back of Timmy’s head as he bobbed up and down, but added no pressure. He only wanted to remind Timmy of who was in charge. After a few minutes of earnest sucking, Liev stopped Timmy by grabbing his jaw and pushed him back to sit on his heels. So this had not been enough. 

“I need you to take off your pants and lie on the bed,” Liev gave this instruction in a low, even voice. If Timmy was disappointed or reluctant, it was impossible to tell by looking at his face. He stood promptly to comply. The bed was in full view of the table, only feet away in Lydia’s room. Feeling the comparative thinness of his own pants as he took them off and abandoned them on the floor, Timmy kicked them towards a pile of other clothes. Ordinarily, he would make a point to follow Liev’s commands to the letter, but Timmy had been tied up, blindfolded, gagged and strangled by his own shirt enough times that he took it off without being asked to, adding it to the growing heap of clothes. He lay back on the unmade bed and waited. 

Lydia had the habit of hanging her scarves over the window. It was something he noticed most of the girls at the brothel did. It was the time of day when the sun hit just the right spot between buildings and shone through the sun-faded yellow veil, making a pool of tinted light on the threadbare sheets. It was warm and soft and familiar in Lydia’s bed. He could smell her there. Timmy noticed that he was crying. He couldn’t for all the world figure out why. He also couldn’t remember the last time he had cried at all. When his mother died, he had tried to. He had been so little really, and he wanted to cry so badly. But he just couldn’t. He remembered it made him feel broken. He figured that it must have been all the times he forced himself not to cry; his body had just lost the ability altogether. It had made him feel like a bad son. Looking at it now, it made sense. An infant cries because it's the only way it knows to get its needs filled. A child born into sex trafficking soon learns that crying gets you hit or worse. So why bother?

After his mother died, not much changed really. Lydia had already been doing a decent amount of the heavy lifting that was keeping Timmy alive. Every time he tried to think about his mother and about missing her, a mental image kept getting in the way. It was so long ago now that the details were lost to him. It had become a memory of a memory. She had done something that Liev had not approved of. And that was back when he and Lydia had really been hot and heavy, so it must have been something exceptionally bad. Liev had her by the arm and was trying to drag her off as she dug her heels into the dirty floor, when he noticed Timmy, wide-eyed and trying his hardest not to be underfoot.

“Well, if beating your ass doesn’t get you to stop, what if I beat his ass instead?” Liev’s voice was terrible and deep and Timmy did not like it. Liev dropped his mother’s arm and grabbed Timmy by the wrist. She could have said something. Timmy’s mom could have said  _ no _ , could have begged him to take her instead of Timmy. But she didn’t. That was the first time Liev raped Timmy. But all he could really remember from that day was the look on his mother’s face as Liev yanked him down the hall. There was no relief or fear or guilt on her face. It was just empty. 

He couldn’t cry at his own mother’s cheap memorial, but he was crying now in his own bed and he didn’t like it. It made him feel utterly out of control. He wiped his face with the backs of hands and hoped Liev had been too busy relieving himself of his pants to notice. 

“I know you’re fucking Lydia, don’t you have any lube here?” Liev asked. Timmy didn’t need to be told twice, he rolled over to the rickety bedside table and quickly fished a bottle of lube out of the top drawer. He hadn’t held out much hope for Liev using anything to make this easier for him. He was thankful, but at the same time distracted by his unexplained tears. He sniffed a few times as he closed the drawer because he realized that his nose had started to run. He returned to his position on his back, this time with his knees on his chest. 

“Well?” Liev sounded a bit annoyed this time, “I’m not doing that, am I?” He nodded towards the bottle of lube still in Timmy’s hand. Wasting no time, Timmy got himself ready as best he could with his practiced hands. He knew he had to balance getting as stretched as he could manage before Liev’s impatience made him get rougher than he would otherwise. When Liev settled on the bed between Timmy’s feet, he knew his time was up. Liev put one hand on top of Timmy’s leg while the other absent-mindedly stroked his cock. Timmy squirted more lube into his hand and sat up on his elbows to reach Liev’s erection. 

Timmy had an instinct to think anything he intended to say out loud several times before giving it voice. He had discovered that most things, in fact, did not need to be said at all. Currently, he was thinking of saying, “You don’t need to do this here. Please don’t do this here on Lydia’s bed.” But even just thinking it to himself made him feel pathetic. How stupid had he been to expect this place to be safe? So he pushed the thought out of his mind and, as usual, said nothing at all.

As he’d been mulling over asking Liev to stop, the large man had been positioning them both. He had decided to spread Timmy’s legs and hold them at the knees as he lined himself up for penetration. Liev was so intent on what he was doing, Timmy hoped he didn’t notice that the tears had started again. He closed his eyes and turned his head to the side as Liev pushed in. Some men wanted eye contact as they fucked him, others felt threatened by it. Timmy might have pegged Liev for a man who wanted to see the pain in his eyes, but letting him see the tears felt like giving up too much of himself. He couldn't afford to be seen as weak right now. This should be easy, Timmy told himself over and over. This should be something he was used to. Even slightly prepared, even doing his best to relax, it stung because Liev was just so large. Timmy had one hand buried in the sheets and the other balled up against Liev’s still clothed chest. In a silent attempt to get Liev to slow down, Timmy pushed his fist futility against him. If Liev noticed, it did nothing to hinder his entry into Timmy. He tried to breathe through the pain.

After he sank all the way in, Liev leaned down and buried his head against Timmy’s throat. At first, he kissed and nuzzled in a way that might be mistaken as loving. The only roughness, the stubble on Liev’s unshaven face. But he built up to sucking and then to biting. The message was clear, teeth so close to Timmy’s precious heartbeat: he could end Timmy whenever he felt like. That Timmy wasn’t in control. It seemed so redundant, Timmy knew this fact already. His life had never really been in his control at all. Maybe earlier that day, when he was pacing around the table and checking the fridge, it had felt like he was starting to have some control. But it wasn’t real. As Liev built up to a steady rhythm, Timmy idly thought maybe that’s why he was crying. The illusion of control had been destroyed. Seemed as plausible an explanation as any. 

Liev was close already, Timmy could tell simply by listening to the ragged breathing in his ear. He was grateful that he hadn’t needed to put in much effort. To speed things to their end, he wrapped his ankles together behind Liev’s back and used the leverage to lift himself slightly off the bed so Liev was entering him at a slightly different angle. This caused Liev to moan and then to bite down on Timmy’s clavicle as he came. 

Timmy suddenly thought of Lydia, and hoped she wouldn’t walk in on them like this: Liev collapsed on top of him with tears in his eyes and a hickey on his chest. Not because he was feeling shame, but because he was worried about how Lydia might react. Lydia still had fond feelings when it came to Liev; and he knew that if this intrusion was enough to make him cry, it would almost certainly destroy Lydia. On the other hand, Lydia was probably tougher than he gave her credit for. After all, who had scooped him up after his mother had failed to stop Liev from raping him? She hadn’t batted an eye either, just checked on his bleeding and heated him some dinner. When he spent his days thinking about how to best protect her, he sometimes forgot that she’d been doing this a lot longer than Timmy.

She’d come back after Liev had dislocated his shoulder with Mary in tow. Mary was another one of the brothel's inhabitants that had a secret, earlier life. All he knew about her was that Mary had been a doctor. He was unsure of the exact course of her life's decline, but he knew she sometimes worked shifts in the neighborhood’s black market clinic. As an unregistered birth, this was the only kind of healthcare Timmy had ever known. Mary insisted that she talk Lydia through resetting his shoulder instead of doing it herself, “In case you need to do this again when I’m not here,” she said.

“Jesus, if this happens again, he can reset his own damn arm,” since Mary was in the room, Lydia made it sound like a joke. But Timmy knew he’d disappointed her. At this point Lydia had already tied her wagon to Liev’s rising star; she’d stopped turning tricks and starting taking inventory of the sundry black- and gray-market goods Liev dealt in. Timmy could either join her or be left behind completely.

After Mary left Timmy in a sling with an ice pack on his shoulder and a shot of whiskey in his stomach, the things he had wanted to say to Liev poured out of him at Lydia, “So I should have just let them kill my friend? Anything to keep Liev happy and you and I safe?” He had said these things angrily, but they were partly honest questions that he desperately wanted straightforward answers to. Timmy’s strong suit had never been morality.

“What I’m saying is: Now you know more about the rules of the game,” she chose her words carefully, slowly. “You made a choice to help your friend, now you know the consequences. Would you do it again?” she didn’t wait for an answer. “I made a choice not to intervene between you and Liev, now I know the consequences. Would I do it again?”

As Timmy waited for Liev to catch his breath and get off of him, he thought about his mother’s face as he was pulled away and compared it to Lydia’s face as he was pulled away. He thought about choices and illusions that looked like choices, and about doing what needed to be done. He’d meet with Oestra, he’d do whatever was asked of him, just like always. The sureness he had about this seemed to center him. His head still turned away from Liev, he noticed he had stopped crying. 

Liev suddenly grabbed his face and forced him to look in his eyes again, his full weight pressing down and taking Timmy’s breath away. 

“I know you have trouble listening sometimes. That you’re stubborn like your mother. So I’m going to make this very clear,” Liev sounded truly angry for the first time that morning. “Burton still owns your ass. You need to do whatever the fuck they tell you to do when you meet with Oestra.”

Timmy wanted to laugh. Was this a piece of fatherly advice? Liev trying to cover his own ass in case Timmy fucked things up and it reflected back on him somehow? Timmy could only think of a singular time he’d tried to stand up for himself and what had it gotten him? A dislocated shoulder. Instead of laughing, though, he nodded as best he could with his face captured between Liev’s fingers.

“Good,” Liev sighed with relief and let go of Timmy’s face. “I’ve always liked you, kid. There’s something off about you, but you’ll be ok.” He added a patronizing pat to Timmy’s cheek before he pulled out of him. Liev was up and fetching his pants off the cheap rug Lydia kept by her bed. Timmy recognized once again that his opinion on the situation was not wanted. So he just gave an empty smile as he sat up. Timmy watched silently as Liev grabbed his coat off the back of the chair and slid it on. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, an address and time most likely, and a credit chip and left them on the only clear spot on the table.

“For fuck’s sake get something to eat and show up with a full stomch,” he straightened his lapels as he headed for the door. “Oh, and give Lydia my regards.” Timmy gave an amiable nod of acknowledgement. He hadn’t yet decided how much of this he wanted to tell Lydia about. The door closed and Timmy was alone again.

What was done was done. Timmy got up and shuffled to the bathroom as he asked himself, “Do you know more rules of the game now?” He felt like he did. He learned that they weren’t done using him up yet and probably never would be. He cleaned himself slowly and methodically and avoided looking at himself in the mirror.

“Knowing the consequences, would you do it again?” a combination of himself and Lydia asked. No, he’d never put his guard down again. Maybe ever.

Timmy wasn’t one to linger on the past. So he tried to shake his memories out of his head as he pulled his pants on. He never really saw the point of dwelling on things. If he spent too much of his time thinking about all the bad shit that happened to him, he might never be able to function again, much less ever be happy. He  _ had _ to look forward. Timmy’s stomach growled, this helped ground himself in the present. With a loaded credit chip, an empty stomach was an easy enough problem to solve. He hurried into his shirt and boots before shoving both the note and the chip into his back pocket without ever looking at either as he walked out the door.


End file.
